Michael Portnoy (born August 2, 1971) is an American
visual artist
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...
, filmmaker, choreographer and performance artist. He calls himself a "Director of Behavior". He has been described in ''
Art in America'' as "one of the most interesting performance artists anywhere", and by ''
Artforum
''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...
'' as "the great Absurdist".
Background and early work
Portnoy was
born in
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
, and studied
comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...
and
creative writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
at
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...
and theater at the
National Theater Institute at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. After moving to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, he formed several short-lived
experimental theater
Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre), inspired largely by Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular ...
groups and then began concentrating on solo performance. His early performance works, such as ''Gymnastics and Schizophrenia'' and ''5teen3sy: Kicking Games of Lip'', were antic and unpredictable, and characterized by
dense
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematically ...
language play, song and movement fragments and rapid transformations of character. In the mid 1990s, Portnoy regularly performed in venues such as
Surf Reality and
Luna Lounge
Luna Lounge was a bar and music club located at 171 Ludlow Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Opened in 1995 by Dianne Galliano and Robert Sacher, it was a popular venue for local bands and stand-up comics (the rock band Interpol played there ...
's weekly show "Eating It", the epicenter of New York's alternative comedy scene. His wild and abstract theatrical performances, which occasionally interrupted and challenged other comedians on stage, prompted ''
Time Out New York
''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 328 cities in 58 countries worldwide.
In 2012, the London edition becam ...
'' to describe him as "the bad boy of comedy", and the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' to dub him "the next
Andy Kaufman
Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman ( ; January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a "comedian", Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes b ...
". At the same time, Portnoy started working as a dancer for the New York choreographer Koosil-Ja Hwang, and as an actor. He also sang and performed his own operatic,
electro-
progressive-rock music as XAR, and with the band The Liquid Tapedeck.
Soy Bomb
For
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's performance of "
Love Sick" at the
1998 Grammy Awards, Portnoy was hired by Dylan's production company to stand in the background with other dancers and groove to the music to "give Bob a good vibe". Instead, halfway through the performance, Portnoy ripped off his shirt, ran next to Dylan, and started dancing and contorting spastically with the
two-word poem "Soy Bomb" written across his chest. When questioned by reporters, Portnoy explained the poem's meaning: "
Soy
The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses.
Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu and ...
... represents dense
nutrition
Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient ...
al life. Bomb is, obviously, an
explosive destructive force. So, soy bomb is what I think art should be: dense, transformational, explosive life" according to ''Entertainment Weekly'' and that "he meant Soy Bomb as a 'spontaneous explosion of the self' to re-invigorate the current music scene.
[Derek Yip. "MICHAEL PORTNOY aka SOY BOMB, Upstart Pissing on the Contemporary Mix", ''Performing Arts Journal'', No. 61 (January 1999), pp. 36-44] He has also said that the phrase is a combination of Spanish and English, meaning "the bomb of 'I am'". The Grammys chose not to press charges against Portnoy for the act, but he was not paid the $200 fee for the gig.
The event was parodied on ''
Saturday Night Live
''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...
'', where he was portrayed by
Will Ferrell
John William Ferrell (; born July 16, 1967) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show '' Saturday Night Live'', where he performed from 1995 to 2 ...
, and on ''
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that first aired from May 25, 1992, to May 29, 2009. It resumed production on March 1, 2010 and ended on February 6, 2014.
The fourth incarnation of the ...
''. In 2005, the band
Eels
Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 19 families, 111 genera, and about 800 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage ...
included the track "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" on the double-disc album ''
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations''. In 2016, the TV show
Broad City
''Broad City'' is an American television sitcom created by and starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. It was developed from their independent web series of the same name, which was produced between 2009 and 2011. The sitcom, like the web series ...
parodied Soy Bomb with a performance artist character played by musician
Har Mar Superstar
Sean Tillmann (born February 6, 1978) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. He has performed and released studio albums as Sean Na Na and as a member of hardcore band Calvin Krime, but is best known for his work under the name Har Mar Super ...
.
Portnoy: 1999–present
Portnoy expanded his practice to include
choreography, video,
installation
Installation may refer to:
* Installation (computer programs)
* Installation, work of installation art
* Installation, military base
* Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...
,
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...
,
painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
, participatory works and curation. His projects have included Google Office 0.2, a project for the 2010 Taipei Biennial that involved the formation of a
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
called The Improvement League, which operated by improving existing artworks in the Biennial by
pruning
Pruning is a horticultural, arboricultural, and silvicultural practice involving the selective removal of certain parts of a plant, such as branches, buds, or roots.
The practice entails the ''targeted'' removal of diseased, damaged, dead, ...
and
hybridizing in a cross between
futurology
Futures studies, futures research, futurism or futurology is the systematic, interdisciplinary and holistic study of social and technological advancement, and other environmental trends, often for the purpose of exploring how people will li ...
and
conceptual horticulture
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
. Portnoy's long-standing investigation of
social exchange
Social exchange theory is a sociological and psychological theory that studies the social behavior in the interaction of two parties that implement a cost-benefit analysis to determine risks and benefits. The theory also involves economic relation ...
, and the rules of communication and play, has been conducted through a series of 'abstract gambling' tables for Casino Ilinx (2008) and Filzzungeungewiss (2009); and conversation or inventional games drawing on 17th century universal or taxonomic languages for Fran Spafa Feda (2010); and the game-show format of 27 Gnosis (2012).
Relational Stalinism
Central to many of Portnoy's projects is his
tongue-in-cheek
The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner.
History
The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scot ...
concept of 'Relational
Stalinism', a form of relational aesthetics that works against "the fashionable promise that an artwork might offer a democratic magic, transforming inter-relational codes into something nicer…"
[Tirdad Zolghadr. ''Creamier: Contemporary Art in Culture: 10 Curators, 100 Contemporary Artists, 10 Sources'', Phaidon Press, 2010, pp. 192-193.] Unlike other artists who produce participatory artworks, Portnoy undermines the creation of a harmonious community by setting as many limitations as possible on the participants and then introducing destabilizing mechanisms, such as changing the rules in the middle of the game. This breed of
absurdist,
dictatorial
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
interaction with participants is "a clarification of the artist's imperious role as producer and performer".
[ Contrary to many contemporary participatory events, these schemes value confusion, complication, and ambiguity over predictable outcomes, and the goal is to stretch and dislocate the participants by complicating their behavior and language in the service of riotous invention. By acting as the "Director of Behavior" and constantly modifying the standards of the game, Portnoy forces the participants to construct unexpected worlds and new modes of communication.
]
Experimental comedy
Much of Portnoy’s work is also framed by what he calls experimental comedy, or "the injection of the sublime, the blatantly inscrutable, the abstract, the primal, the choreographic, the theoretical, the improbable, the generative, the post-rhythmic, the turbo-stupid, etc., into the frame of stand-up".[''After Berkeley: Objectif Exhibitions, 2010–2011'', Sternberg Press, 2012] This has been manifested in the operatic stand-up routine of The K Sound (2006), Taipei Women’s Experimental Comedy Club (2010), and Script Opposition in Late-Model Carrot Jokes (2011), a project that investigated the "carrot joke", a term used in cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics, combining knowledge and research from cognitive science, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are con ...
to describe a poem-like joke with a high degree of ambiguity, blunt omissions of information and logical faults and inconsistencies. In carrot jokes "incongruities are rarely resolved and just pile on top of each other … Since the ground or ‘script’ is always shifting, the listener keeps trying to determine whether there is an overall story that could explain what the hell is going on".[
]
Selected exhibitions and performances
He has presented work internationally in venues including: dOCUMENTA (13), The 11th Baltic Triennial (as co-curator), Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, The Taipei Biennial 2010, Performa Biennial 07, 09 & 11, SculptureCenter
SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit, contemporary art museum located in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1928 as "The Clay Club" by Dorothea Denslow. In 2013, SculptureCentre attracted around 13,000 visitors.
History
Fo ...
, The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...
, de Appel (Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Art Unlimited Basel, Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland. As Switzerland's oldest and still most active institution for contemporary art, Kunsthalle Basel forms a vital part of Basel's cultural centre and is located next to the city's ...
, Objectif Exhibitions ( Antwerp), Wilfried Lentz (Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"Ne ...
), IBID PROJECTS (London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Gallery, Deitch Gallery, Roulette, Kling & Bang (Reykjavík
Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...
), Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
), Kaaitheater (Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
), Beursschouwburg (Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
), Migros Museum ( Zurich), Le Comfort Moderne (Poitiers, France
Poitiers (, , , ; Poitevin: ''Poetàe'') is a city on the River Clain in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and the historical centre of Poitou. In 2017 it had a population of 88,291. Its agglomer ...
) and The National Review of Live Art (Glasgow
Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
).
References
External links
Michael Portnoy Wants to Know: Can You Fuck to An Irregular Beat?, Garage Magazine - VICE, January 12, 2020
Ex-Comedian Michael Portnoy on How Performance Art Can Exorcise Your Alt-Right Demons, artnet news, June 2017
Review in Frieze magazine of Portnoy's 27 Gnosis performance
Video excerpt from 27 Gnosis performance at Documenta, 2012
Strangergames: The official website of Michael Portnoy
Interview in Metropolis M
Profile In Time Out NY
{{DEFAULTSORT:Portnoy, Michael
Artists from New York City
Living people
Vassar College alumni
Artists from Washington, D.C.
American performance artists
1971 births